'The Strain': No vampire romance here

By Breeanna Hare, CNN

Updated 9:57 PM ET, Sat July 12, 2014

Vampires on screen18 photos

Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – FX's new series "The Strain" wants to bring an end to the trend of sexy, sometimes sparkly vampires. Executive produced by Guillermo del Toro and "Lost's" Carlton Cuse, the horror series features some creepy bloodsuckers that you definitely do not want to bring home. How do they compare to these other vamps who've graced the big and small screens?

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Vampires on screen18 photos

Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – Max Schreck's Count Orlok in 1922's silent masterpiece "Nosferatu" is the granddaddy of the movie vampire. Appropriately ghoulish and frightening, "Nosferatu," based on Bram Stoker's "Dracula," is considered a gold standard of the genre.

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Vampires on screen18 photos

Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – When people think of a vampire, they usually think of Bela Lugosi (right). Back in 1931, the actor starred as Count Dracula in Tod Browning's film of the same name after playing the bloodthirsty character on Broadway. With his tantalizing accent, slick hair and dark cape, Lugosi's version of Dracula was emulated by vampire impersonators for years to come.

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Vampires on screen18 photos

Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – In the '60s TV series "The Munsters," Yvonne De Carlo helped vampires seem more maternal and friendly as Lily Munster, the matriarch of a very unusual family.

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Vampires on screen18 photos

Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – Jonathan Frid's vampire Barnabas Collins started off as scary in the late '60s soap, "Dark Shadows," but it wasn't long before he transitioned into being a love interest who just happened to have an appetite for blood. Johnny Depp later reprised the role in a 2012 movie adaptation of the TV series.

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – "Sesame Street" took the horrific character and made him family friendly -- and educational. Clearly inspired by Bela Lugosi's take on the vampire, Count von Count doesn't have an interest in blood as much as he does numerical order.

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – It's safe to say Christopher Lee got a kick out of playing vampires. The actor played Dracula multiple times during his 68 years in the business. Here, he's seen in 1968's "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave," but he first played the undead legend in 1958's "Horror of Dracula."

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – To those who thought vampires only came in one shade -- pale -- 1972's "Blacula" corrected that assumption. William Marshall could bite with the best of them.

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – The '80s was rife with both horror classics and timeless teen films, with 1987's "The Lost Boys" being a lovably imperfect combination of both. Kiefer Sutherland starred as the peroxide blonde leader of a pack of heavy metal vamps that wouldn't have looked out of place in a trigonometry class.

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Vampires on screen18 photos

Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – In 1992, Francis Ford Coppola wanted to instill some fear back into the vampire genre, and he tapped Gary Oldman to help him do it. The actor played the titular "Dracula," giving us one of the scariest performances yet.

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – No one masters the "scary but hot" element of vampirism quite like Anne Rice. In 1994, the film adaptation of her novel "Interview with the Vampire" was as seductive as it was frightening. Pictured here with a pre-teen Kirsten Dunst, who played the child vamp Claudia, Brad Pitt (center) was Louis and Tom Cruise portrayed the infamous Lestat.

Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – For a certain generation, these two vampires from Joss Whedon's '90s series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (based on the campy 1992 movie) are the kings of the coffin. They weren't cuddly, but they did cuddle up to Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy Summers. There was David Boreanaz's heartthrob Angel (left), and James Marsters' Spike, whose bad boy side became more endearing in later seasons.

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – In the 1998 movie "Blade," Wesley Snipes played a creature that was neither fully vampire nor fully human. As the product of a mother who was bitten by a vampire as she gave birth, Snipes' Blade -- originally a Marvel Comics character -- fights to protect the human population from the bloodthirsty.

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – The battle between the vampires and the werewolves is captured with an action flick spin in the "Underworld" series, which stars Kate Beckinsale as the stealth and strong Selene.

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – The 2008 adaptation of Stephenie Meyers' "Twilight" created a rift in the vampire genre, as devotees turned up their noses at a vampire family that drank animal instead of human blood, sparkled in sunlight and abstained from sex until marriage -- none of which followed vampire lore.

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – On the other hand, for those who found "Twilight's" vampires to be far too saintly, there was HBO's adults-only series "True Blood." Adapted from the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris, "True Blood" premiered in 2008 and was everything "Twilight" was not: dirty, sexy, gory and -- best of all -- funny.

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Vampires on screen: 'Dracula' to 'The Strain' – In 2009, The CW -- a.k.a., the network the teens watch -- premiered "The Vampire Diaries," another TV show adapted from a book series. Starring a pair of ridiculously handsome brothers and the teen girl they both fall for, "TVD" has an equal mix of heat, camp and teen-friendly plotting.

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Story highlights

FX's new series "The Strain" is a return to scary vampires

Series is produced by Guillermo del Toro, Carlton Cuse and Chuck Hogan

Critics have lauded its debut

Tender, loving vampires? Look elsewhere than FX's "The Strain."

The new thriller series, produced by Guillermo del Toro, Carlton Cuse and author Chuck Hogan, wants to make bloodsuckers scary again.

"The vampire genre has sort of been overrun by romance," Cuse told reporters on a press call. "We had had our fill of vampires that we're feeling sorry for because they had romantic problems."

Instead, "The Strain's" vampires lose their heart, their hair and their genital organs. When these vampires fully transition, there's no mistaking them for the really pale guy in science class.

For Cuse, that was the selling point for hopping aboard.

"The idea of sort of reimagining the vampires, going back to the roots of what vampires are -- that they are scary, dangerous creatures -- that was something that was incredibly compelling for me; the idea that when you see these things, it's not good."

An adaptation of Hogan and del Toro's books, "The Strain," premiering Sunday, July 13, begins with the mysterious deaths of passengers aboard an airplane that lands in New York. All but a few on the flight appear to be dead, and CDC epidemiologist Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) heads over to investigate with a few colleagues.

But the wormy outbreak they're examining is far more ancient and sinister then they realize -- and it isn't long before the horrific outbreak spreads.

"I've been obsessed by vampires for a long, long time, since I was a very young kid, and a very strange kid," del Toro said during the press call.

"I read about vampire mythology worldwide and I familiarized myself with the Japanese, Filipino, Malaysian and Eastern European variations on the vampire, and many, many others. And I kept very detailed notes as a kid on where to go with the vampire myth in terms of brutality, social structure (and) biology. Some of those notes made it into my first feature, 'Cronos.' Some of them made it in 'Blade II' when I directed that, and most of them made it into 'The Strain.'"

In del Toro's world, the undead do not sparkle, do not brood and do not hesitate to take out someone they once loved. In fact, the first thing to go is their heart.

"The older that they stay alive, the more they lose their humanity," del Toro explained. "They start literally by losing their heart; their heart is suffocated by a vampire heart that overtakes the functions. This was important metaphorically for me because the beacon that guides these vampires to their victims is love. Love is what makes them seek their victims. They go to the people they love the most. So they turn their instinct that is most innately human into the most inhuman feeding mechanism."

With "The Strain" being on FX, hardcore horror fans are likely skeptical that the drama can be as graphic as an R-rated movie would be. Cuse told press that the network gave the producers "the latitude" to tell the story their way -- and critics have taken notice.

"'The Strain' is packed with so much macabre imagery and so many clever ideas that it doesn't feel like the resuscitation of a tired genre, but the launch of something new and fun," says HitFix's Alan Sepinwall.

Granted, like the show's gross-out billboards, the producers' commitment to "unadulterated" storytelling may not sit well with some viewers.

"This is cult-classic, midnight-movie horror, designed in meticulous, mythology-respecting detail for comic-book readers and fangirls and -boys," says Entertainment Weekly. "The show isn't for everyone. But that special someone it is for? She's gonna love it."